SUN­DAY

Hedd Wyn M ori TV, Noon Star­ring Huw Gar­mon. A Welsh lan­guage film about real-life poet El­lis Humphrey Evans, who en­listed in the Bri­tish Army de­spite his paci­fist lean­ings, only to be killed at Pass­chen­daele. It is a som­bre pe­riod drama, cap­tur­ing the feel­ings of many Welsh peo­ple of the time, who didn’t re­ally feel much em­pa­thy with the stri­dent na­tion­al­ism and colo­nial am­bi­tions of the pre­dom­i­nantly English gov­ern­ment in West­min­ster. Hedd Wyn (blessed peace) is the name Evans adopted be­fore the war be­gan. ★★★★

The Fifth El­e­ment TVNZ Duke, 8.30pm

Star­ring Bruce Wil­lis, Milla Jovovich. Long on style but short on sense, The Fifth El­e­ment is a wildly imag­i­na­tive – if rather self-in­dul­gent – fu­tur­is­tic ac­tion fan­tasy from French direc­tor Luc Bes­son. Blonded Bruce Wil­lis plays a world-weary 23rd-cen­tury air­borne cab­bie out to save the Earth from de­struc­tion by an evil alien force with the help of a mys­te­ri­ous, de­cep­tively waif-like hero­ine (Milla Jovovich) who drops into his life. Pre­pare to be daz­zled by the amaz­ing sets, skimpy cos­tume de­signs, but annoyed in the last half-hour when the film is hi­jacked by Chris Tucker as DJ Ruby Rhod. ★★★

The Turpin 13: Fam­ily Se­crets Ex­posed Bravo, 8.30pm Lurid doc­u­men­tary and TV movie about David and Louise Turpin, who abused their 13 chil­dren over many years at their Per­rin, Cal­i­for­nia home. Al­legedly, the ‘chil­dren’, some as old as 29, were given just a ounce of food a day and al­lowed to shower once a year. Le­gal pro­ceed­ings are on­go­ing and the cou­ple face up to 94 years in jail. ★★

Mt Fuji. The plan is to ac­ti­vate the Pa­cific Ring of Fire and wipe out hu­man life. At heart, it’s a rip-roar­ing Godzilla-style B-grade movie. It did well in Asian mar­kets. ★★★

xXx: Re­turn Of Xan­der Cage Three, 8.40pm Star­ring Vin Diesel, Don­nie Yen. Xan­der Cage re­turns, even though not many peo­ple were ask­ing for him to do so, and from the look of this film he should have stayed away. True, Vin Diesel is a great ac­tion star, but even he needs a script to work with, and while the ac­tion pieces are ini­tially im­pres­sive they be­come far too repet­i­tive. ★★

Raid On Rom­mel M ori TV, 8.30pm Star­ring Richard Bur­ton, Wolf­gang Preiss. B-grade wartime movie from 1971 star­ring Bur­ton as a Bri­tish in­tel­li­gence agent who takes over a Ger­man con­voy, and con­trives to meet Field Mar­shall Er­win Rom­mel. Bur­ton was way above this medi­ocre ef­fort which re­cy­cled footage from ear­lier war films. ★★

Snitch Choice, 8.30pm Star­ring Dwayne John­son, Su­san Saran­don. Dwayne John­son tries to stretch him­self a lit­tle fur­ther as an ac­tor in this more-thought­fulthan-usual ac­tion thriller about a fa­ther who goes un­der­cover for the Drug En­force­ment Ad­min­is­tra­tion in a deal to save his teenage son from prison time. ★★★

Point Break TVNZ 2, 9.40pm

Star­ring Luke Bracey, Edgar Ramirez. Re­make of Kathryn Bigelow’s 1991 crime thriller in which a cop in­fil­trates a team of ex­treme sports ath­letes who carry out cor­po­rate heists. Bracey and Ramirez look the part but their char­ac­ters lack sub­stance and this movie is a pale im­i­ta­tion of the orig­i­nal. ★

Open Grave TVNZ 2, 12.40am (Sun­day)

Star­ring Sharlto Co­p­ley. A promis­ing premise fails to live up to its po­ten­tial in this patchy hor­ror about a man who wakes up in a pit of bod­ies with no me­mory of who he is or how he got there. ★★